Aanchir

The Super Heroes chest piece works quite well as a bottom, to be perfectly honest, which is very useful since armoring the hips and bottom of a figure can prove quite difficult normally (I've seen several less-than-stellar solutions). Unfortunately, it doesn't work for figures much smaller than this one since it is so wide. Finding that the spherical armor piece could fit in front to armor the rest of the lower body was a happy accident. It leaves the bottom ball joint of the torso beam exposed, but the gap is not conspicuous since there is no point where you can see all the way through her lower body, and could be useful if I wanted a place to attach her to a steed or vehicle of some kind. The tail actually doesn't use the clip-rod part at all (if we're talking about the same piece). It is a System boat/skid plate and a System cone attached to a lasso from the Minifigures Series 8 Cowgirl. The lasso is looped around where the chest piece attaches to the 6M shell that makes up the lower back. Regarding her posability, the legs have a fairly good range of motion, but it is somewhat limited. The bottom isn't really the source of the problems because there are very few poses where you need the legs to bend backwards, and they can still bend out to her sides a good deal (though she can't do a straddle split due to a collision with the thigh armor). Most limits to her articulation, compared to an actual human, involve the lack of waist articulation. Unfortunately I still haven't found a simple, versatile solution for waist articulation that leaves plenty of connection points for the upper and lower body to be armored independently. It's not hard. The only real complication is that the mace head pieces aren't pressed all the way onto the axle (this would put them too close together) and you have to be a bit careful not to press them together so far that the paw pieces slip past each other. But overall it's sturdy and doesn't fall apart easily at all, which was what I was worried about when I made the paw pieces not technically connected. I was able to build this on the LXF I linked above, so it shouldn't be hard for you to replicate if you're so inclined. Thank you for your in-depth comment! Overall, I just wish I could make MOCs I'm this proud of on a regular basis. I've tried to experiment with making a male figure who's as shapely and well-armored as Kit is here-- no such luck. It's hard to build a male torso with a well-defined musculature without rapidly using up all the most valuable connection points on a torso beam. Regardless, the positive feedback I've gotten here encourages me to photograph and post some of my other, smaller MOCs when I find the time.

Picture was taken with my iPhone. It's not great, but it's better than my digital camera. Ideally I should have retouched these photos a bit before uploading them, but schoolwork's been a real burden and I figured it'd be better to get this posted sooner and get it out of the way than to create more work for myself and cut it close to the deadline. The torso actually IS a standard 9x11 Hero Factory torso beam. I have a slightly-modified version of this built on LDD that I can upload sometime to demonstrate how it's built. EDIT: Here you go: LXF Download. You'll notice some differences from the finished model: The spikes from the hammer, the head, and the thigh armor pieces are substituted since the correct parts are not available on LDD. This means that attaching the lower jaw to the head and the spikes to the hammer is impossible. The tail, the handcuffs, the spikes from the hammer, the parts that fill the chest cavity, the 3M shells used to armor the sides, and the lower jaw are all left aside. These parts are not necessarily connected illegally (some connections are certainly legal, some are more dubious) but most of them have fiddly connections that would be difficult if not impossible on LDD.

Kit Martello Don't let her cute face and perky attitude mislead you — Kit is a skilled rabbit warrior, as adept at fighting unarmed as she is brandishing her giant hammer. Front - Side - Back - 3/4 Battle-ready - Rabbit kick - Sitting pretty - Kicking back - Hammer detail Flickr gallery My entry for BZPower's BBCC64 (Entry topic). 93 pieces total. She was originally a MOC I made shortly after arriving at college this semester, as an experiment in making a female Hero Factory figure that is well-armored on all sides. Furno's helmet was used due to its unique look and cute, feminine expression when used in reverse. After the contest was announced I added the tail to reinforce the animal motifs of the helmet. I considered a squirrel tail (since bunny girls are unbelievably cliché), but I had a hard enough time creating a connection point that could support a tail this small. Feel free to share any thoughts, comments, or criticisms.

Can't help but notice how Breez is in her 2.0 form in a one of the screenshots. They couldn't even be bothered to render her Breakout form. Surge getting brained is an interesting surprise. Hope the episode comes out in the US soon so I don't have to worry about too many spoilers.

It's probably a store exclusive. Those rarely get shown at the toy fairs, since one of the main purposes of toy fairs is to show off the year's toys to retailers who might want to carry them, and it does nobody any good to show off toys that they won't be able to carry at their own stores. Last year at New York Toy Fair, some store exclusives did get shown, specifically ones for licensed themes. It's possible we might see some non-licensed store exclusives at New York Toy Fair, such as the Crocs' Swamp Hideout in Legends of Chima (Chima is, after all, being presented as a pretty big deal), but I doubt a Galaxy Squad store exclusive would show up. Still, guess that's just something else to look forward to even after the major Toy Fairs are all wrapped up.

Keep in mind, though, that there are those who complain to no end about oversized City boats, trucks, and airplanes... I think scaling up "official" LEGO City boats wouldn't be an acceptable option among many AFOLs even if it could be done affordably. Just another clear reason WHY detailed living spaces tend to be absent from more "boy-oriented" sets... the more interior detail, the more space it takes to enclose it all.

I dunno; could just be what they have overstock in. Or, perhaps they wanted to keep their variety of parts lower for logistical reasons and for some reason decided white, bright yellow, and transparent blue would appeal to more people than the other colors. I don't have any uncanny knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes there, but I'm sure there's a reason.

Well, printing on LEGO pieces is typically not too difficult to remove. With that said, it is nice to be able to have an unprinted version of a piece without "defacing" it and taking away the ability to ever use it again with its original printing. On that note, as far as I can tell, the only printed parts in the Chima constraction sets seem to be the heads and chests, and none of the printed chest pieces are in colors exclusive to those sets (in fact, the only one not to already exist without printing is Eris's blue chest piece, since it only previously existed with a different print in the Batman set from the LEGO Super Heroes theme). Pick-A-Brick exclusive recolors would really only be practical if TLG had some way of assuring that the piece got bought through Pick-A-Brick in quantities significant enough to justify its production (versus using the same molding machines, materials, and production facility floor space for parts that are actually going to be in sets). And I honestly don't think that's likely. It's more realistic to hope that recolors you want are created for release in sets and happen to show up on Pick-A-Brick as well. BZPower ran a news story on the Pick-A-Brick updates, and some of the earliest comments were asking if there were any BIONICLE parts. That would be about the same issue: if the parts aren't already in production, there has to be a very strong incentive to put them into production, and frankly I doubt offering them in a service geared towards supplementing people's existing LEGO collections would guarantee the kind of sales needed to offset production costs.

But would it have supported the model's weight? The reason these sets use friction joints is that regardless of whether they can support their own weight at the time they are built, they should be able to sit for a long time (even in a sunlit window) without becoming unstable. That's part of the reason for the heat test. Exposing a set to extraordinary conditions for a brief while simulates how it will respond to ordinary conditions in the long term. Overall I imagine the reason the sets' legs were not made more complex is because simpler legs and feet are sturdier. TLG's standards for stability are very high-- it's the reason LEGO action figure and mecha feet in sets tend to be oversized, why many LEGO mecha lack flexible knees, and the reason "click hinge" ball joints are used for so many System mecha despite their somewhat limited range of movement compared to BIONICLE-style ball joints.

I think the chances of its color scheme pointing to a different original pilot is slim, since in general TLG's designers are smart enough not to design a vehicle in the same color as the character piloting it. Making a character's color scheme consistent is a good thing, but having them the same color as their vehicle is a visual mess since it becomes hard to tell where the character ends and the vehicle begins. It's still possible that it was designed for a different pilot, but it's tremendously unlikely that it would have been a character with the same color scheme as the jetpack itself-- if it was Nex at one point, then the jetpack would probably have been a different color at that point as well.

I like the original Friends kitten, myself. Realism is not what I look for in LEGO animals, and I liked the fact that its geometries were slightly stylized as opposed to, say, the classic Belville kitten, which felt just like a real kitten rendered in somewhat low detail. A'course the eye prints still make me hesitant to use LEGO Friends animals with System models, but consistent eye printing is a pretty big deal for me in LEGO. I agree the poodle is a great design, and unlike a lot of Friends animals, you can't even really argue for it to be boxier for use in System, because poodles are an inherently poofy breed, and a boxy look wouldn't work too well for them.

Jet Rocka already is a lot like Aero Booster in terms of size. Not as streamlined as Aero Booster, unfortunately, but the same general idea, and probably executed about as well as it could be to remain functionally interesting and meet a moderate price point (I'm guessing $35, same as Speeda Demon). Overall, I truly prefer getting a vehicle-ish set to getting yet another titan set. Not because I don't like titan sets, but because I'd rather not go a full year without some kind of vehicle/equipment set. Unfortunately, Jet Rocka maintains a flaw that bothered me about Speeda Demon, that being that it makes very little use of the actual HF building system, but then, I guess we've still got a while to wait before we see a model that can pull that off. It also has the exposed Technic beams with very little concealing them which bothered me when we first caught a glimpse of Speeda Demon, but then, I warmed up a great deal to Speeda Demon once I could hold the bike in my hand and appreciate how shapely and streamlined it was regardless of its exposed Technic understructure. Perhaps Jet Rocka will be the same.

Actually, I think they've had that since the original 2011 wave. Certainly the 2012 sets had it. Either name works. Pearl Gold is its Peeron and Bricklink name, Warm Gold is its official name. I tend to use official names, but that's mainly because I know the Bricklink database is riddled with color errors (there are like three or four different colors they call Copper). He's probably supposed to look supercharged with magical energy, just like the NRG ninja from last year. However, in the show, even as the Golden Ninja he has regular yellow skin, probably since they didn't want him to look supercharged with energy all the time but wanted him to keep this costume as a symbol of his achievements. I've seen Stone Army and Stone Warriors used officially. The set descriptions don't have any specific term for them, it just calls them Garmadon's scout/swordsman/warrior and refers to General Kozu by name. Funnily enough, this is his THIRD emblem as a ninja. First a coiled snake, then a snake's head, and finally a dragon's head. The other Ninja's emblems have only ever really changed in color. Actually, the Earth Dragon from two years ago and one of the Ultra Dragon's heads from last year used the same mold. Good review and good pictures! Glad to see this set seems to have your approval!

Laval's fur seems to be either Dark Red or Reddish Brown. I'm gonna go ahead and guess Dark Red since that seems to be the color of his mane in the bigger pic we've seen of his face, and the fur pieces seem to match that. Official name for Dark Red is just Dark Red or New Dark Red. Earth Blue, Earth Green, etc. are a shade darker in TLG's naming scheme, so "Earth Red" wouldn't really apply. What's wrong with the Hulk's chestplate? I'm fond of it, personally. It would be quite difficult to get such a solid-looking chest with smaller pieces, at least at the same price point and building level as other, smaller sets. And believe me, I've tried. I recently built a quite nice large-scale female HF figure and was challenging myself to make a male counterpart with the same level of complexity, and building a broad, flat chest without leaving conspicuous gaps or using up all of your torso beam's connection points is a tremendous challenge. The stubby legs make plenty of sense to me. He is a cartoon gorilla, so why not give him cartoon gorilla proportions? On a side note the mace halves are actually fairly useful for building from my experience. And I say that only having had any for a few weeks (Furno XL and Ogrum were the first two sets I have built with that included them, and already I've used them as the ends of a hammer and the ends of a pair of clubs). I still see nothing "very male" about her head. She's not Sam the American Eagle by any stretch of the imagination, and her face looks completely gender-neutral to me (which was probably the intent, since any male eagle tribe characters would use the same design). Her wings don't look great to me, but I think that's largely a problem with posing and display-- note that they currently aren't even built symmetrically. Built like Razars, as they're probably supposed to be, I think they'd look fine. They're certainly less skeletal than any other HF wings that have been in sets. Besides the Transparent Blue, other useful parts would be the white and gold wing elements which I don't believe appear in those colors in any other sets. Again, I think Eris's wings are supposed to be built more or less the same as his, though I'm not sure if you're saying that his wings are built better or that they're just better suited to use as a villainous raven character than a heroic eagle character. Personally, I think Eris's blades work better as an axe than these weird spike things, but it's nice to see them being used in two different ways regardless. I think his fur pieces are Dark Stone Grey (dark bluish gray), not silver. I don't think her feathers are a problem at this scale, though. Frankly I kind of prefer the detail of this compared to the simpler and more heavily stylized helmets of the minifigure (no offense, Front, your minifig helmet design is still good, but I think for an action figure set this design makes more sense). The constraction sets seem to be aimed at evoking the idea of the characters/animals rather than the minifigs themselves, since their color schemes and face designs are changed heavily. Some details like Razar's metal beak are maintained, but in general there's not much focus on simply "scaling up" the minifigures. I think his armor's just Titanium Metallic. The lighting has done funny things to a lot of these pictures. Copper would be unlikely since (pearl) Copper has been discontinued for a couple years at least.

No idea whatsoever what you mean by "big parts like Dragon Bolt's head never work in "basic" blue". They should work just as well in that color as in any other non-metallic, non-transparent color. I also don't see how the brain slug is "sloppy", even if its eyes and spines don't have as much contrast with it as the rest of the brain slugs with their red eyes. And I recall a lot of people hoping the blades would be yellow, since it's already extremely easy to get gold ones and some people dislike the superfluous use of metallic colors on sets. I'm personally fine with Dragon Bolt's wings in either color. Actually, as far as I can tell he doesn't use the Chi pieces OR Barraki eyes. He's got regular 1x1 round bricks on both the package and the display model. Not sure why there was a change from the version seen in the episode trailer, but maybe it'll change back in the final set. Probably because it's a larger and pricier set. Even if the same size bag as Furno XL and Dragon Bolt worked for him, I imagine they'd want the packaging to be visibly larger just so it stands out as a "premium" set. Pretty sure that's Glow White, the somewhat off-white glow-in-the-dark color that debuted in Monster Fighters. It'd have to be for the glow-in-the-dark feature advertised on the package to work, since the translucent portion can't be Glow White (an opaque color). It looks yellow because all of the pics seem to have a slight yellow tint to them; possibly related to the lighting of the display area. They probably could... currently, I already think it's White Glow and a transparent color; maybe Transparent Fluorescent Green. Changing it to a transparent blue color wouldn't be too hard, though it's not certain whether it would glow as well. I doubt they'll make a set marketed towards AFOLs any time soon, except perhaps through Cuusoo. Quite frankly, AFOLs who like action figure sets are not a massive presence within the community, and those there are are mostly satisfied buying existing sets, whether for display or as parts packs. Also, appealing only to existing LEGO fans is a risky maneuver. One reason for the more adult-oriented sets is to capitalize on non-FOL adults who have a lot of nostalgia for the LEGO sets of their childhood, and adults who played with action figure sets as children are just a smaller pool to draw from than adults who played with the DOZENS of System themes on the market throughout their childhoods. It's also harder in general to market story themes to adults, since generally the stories are designed to appeal to kids primarily. And since there is no generic "constraction" branding that would have crossover appeal with fans of existing constraction themes, it'd be tricky deciding how to present the set.

You probably thought Frost Beast's helmet had a goatee because he has one of the Chima "fur" pieces on his chest, pointed down. In the front-view video clips and screenshots we've seen, it shares the same icy aesthetic as his face and could easily be mistaken for a continuation of that piece. Anyway, the color schemes of these sets seem promising as far as combi models are concerned. It's a bit disappointing that Dragon Bolt is Bright Blue rather than Earth Blue as some of the animation screenshots and that one production render of him looked, but at the same time Bright Blue is often a terribly underused color in Hero Factory, and I appreciate more of it (even if there are very few conspicuous new parts-- those that stand out are Bright Blue Exo-Force robot arms and Savage Planet claw/spike pieces, not to mention Dragon Bolt and Surge's new masks). The number of new Transparent Blue and Transparent Light Blue pieces also helps to fill out that part of the spectrum.

Here's a guide to taking good-quality screenshots, here's a tutorial for hosting images on Brickshelf, and here's a topic on how to deeplink images you host on Brickshelf. I don't know what stage of the process you're having trouble with, but I believe at least one of those three tutorials will have the info you need. In the future if you are having trouble, you can check the Eurobricks Index of Tutorials or the LDD and Digital Tools Section Index-- and if the problem you're having doesn't seem to be answered by any of the topics in either index, don't be afraid to create a topic asking for help, because there are definitely lots of people here on Eurobricks who are happy to share their knowledge. Anyway, one thing I love about these models is how finished they look. The Ultrabuild Super Heroes sets already went above and beyond the average Hero Factory set in providing back armor and unique builds in many cases, but still some like Batman and the Joker took a lot of heat for details that looked spindly or irregular. Additionally, these Chima models typically have a very organic feel, using Hero Factory parts without a lot of mechanical-looking details. Overall, these sets show a lot of very thoughtful design IMO, and I hope we see either more sets in this series or new themes with some of the same design sensibilities in the years to come!

I don't know what you mean by "yours is better"... if you shared yours, I missed it, but I'd love to see your attempt. I think the Eris set is pretty decent, though I'm sure there are areas where it could be improved if you're not building to meet a price point.

I wouldn't say Eris's head is bad. It doesn't look feminine, but it doesn't look masculine either. It just looks like a slightly cartoony eagle. All the sets and their weapons look pretty great in these pics. Not totally original like the prelim Laval we saw, but not all of those "original" builds really worked too well for him, so I can't say I really miss them. The heads look good, the weapons look good, the parts selection looks good... altogether, not a bad lineup.

Comment time! Love how Dragon Bolt's wings alternate between blades and lightning. He does seem to have bright yellow blades and bright blue Savage Planet spikes, but I could be wrong about the former. Incidentally, in the actual model his brain slug seems to be a standard two-color blend (transparent color+glow-in-the-dark), but on the placeholder package it seems like a three-colored blend with red eyes like the other sets. Not sure which to expect in the final model. His head design does look truly epic. Stormer has an epic printed visor. His flick missiles on the package art are not Chi crystals, but rather regular 1x1 round bricks. This means that either the package art is preliminary or the animated version is not accurate to the final model. His weapons are still awesome. Frost Beast remains hard to judge, but he's definitely got that abominable snowman vibe working for him. Surge looks EPIC-- I would never have guessed that a model with two colors of transparent shell used as armor could be pulled off. Incidentally, it looks as though he uses Tr. Fluor. Green rather than Tr. Yellow. Jet Rocka's package looks intense. When folded up, the jetpack isn't that compact, and I think it probably looks its best when the wings are spread. I am growing to like the white after these pics. Rocka would have been better with gold or black hands, though, since in this the silver of the hands looks more like part of the jetpack than part of him.

I just popped in to read this review and saw about the same criticisms I expected to. But I ought to point out that you didn't really name any of the possible reasons for the changes to the model; you basically treated them as unexplainable and moved on. So I thought I might chime in. "For kids" definitely isn't a good enough explanation on its own, but there are a couple things that are related to the fact that it's "for kids" as well as "for store shelves". One of these is the issue of sturdiness. As sturdy and tanklike as both vehicles look in the films, a lot of the most accurate MOCs I've seen of them use building techniques that might be somewhat fragile compared to this final product. And naturally this is important for kids. They aren't going to be putting the Tumbler up on a shelf for display; they'll be rambunctiously ramming it into things and rolling it down stairs, and it should be built for that. The choice to place the back wheels further apart, and thus prevent any double-wheels as would have been accurate, may easily have been to make the model as a whole sturdier. Another issue comes down to branding. Certainly, the Tumbler and Bat are very distinctive models, but part of the reason for the Batman insignia to be on the Bat or for Bane's mask pattern to appear on the Tumbler is to ensure kids understand that this is a Batman product, whether they've seen the movies or not. what defines a bat-vehicle to kids is usually the bat motifs, not just being a jet-black crime-fighting machine. Likewise, kids might expect something tying Bane's Tumbler to Bane. And regardless of any specific demands from kids, something that would be important from a licensing perspective as well as a design perspective is that the models be distinctive. A jet-black vehicle with an odd shape isn't going to stick in kids' heads quite as much as one with clear and visible iconography on it. Likewise, a tan tank with no detail whatsoever wouldn't be too memorable to kids. It's the reason LEGO sets have printed and stickered details in the first place, and the reason that this set has blue and orange accents. But, one might say, the Tumbler already had detail! It had desert camouflage patterns all across it! That may be true, but it has to be pointed out that this cuts dangerously close to TLG's anti-military policy which prohibits weapons, vehicles, and paraphernalia similar to those being used in modern-day military conflicts. And even if TLG was basing their work off the fictional Tumbler, it might have created controversy to put out a product which to people unfamiliar with the source material looked an awful lot like a tank or military armored vehicle. Just look at the controversy over Jabba's Palace to see what a big fuss can be made over even a slight resemblance. And controversy of that sort might make a parent second-guess a purchase. Bane's new ride doesn't resemble any real-world military vehicles even superficially-- and as such, doesn't really face a lot of media scrutiny. Finally, I ought to point out that what makes sense or comes naturally to kids is often more important than accuracy, whether a set is based on a work of fiction or real life. Take, for instance, LEGO fire engines, which are invariably red. Never mind that some fire engines in real life are white or even safety green-- red is fixed in many kids' minds as the color of fire engines and fire stations, and some will go so far as to turn away toys that don't match that perception. Likewise, it's easy to see why some decisions might have been made in this design. The windscreen is centered and see-through because kids might not have accepted a vehicle they didn't think Bane could see through the front of. Most Tumbler MOCs aim for a more accurate portrayal of the windscreen, but kids might not care about this as much as the toy making sense as they understand it. So yeah; I admit this set could be more accurate, but in toy design, accuracy is just one of several important considerations, and often not the most important of them. I definitely appreciate the decision to render these vehicles in LEGO to begin with, even if it meant corners had to be cut and sacrifices had to be made. And I think considering all the changes that WERE made, the designers did admirably in creating something that still evoked the source material, unlike some TDKR tie-in toys I've seen that don't have the faintest resemblance to anything in the movie itself (walking past a shelf of such products in a Best Buy recently made me shake my head in disbelief).

I love Warm Gold (pearl gold). It's so much more vibrant in color than Lacquered Gold (metallic gold), and yet more subdued in luster than either that or Metalized Gold (chrome gold). The color also never wears away no matter how the parts are treated (the other gold colors, which rely on surface treatments, can become scratched if not handled carefully). In general I feel like Metalized and Lacquered Gold should be used sparingly to preserve their visual impact, but I have no such insistence when it comes to Warm Gold or other "pearl" colors. With that said, certain parts don't work in Warm Gold. PotC demonstrated this when there wasn't enough of the Metalized Gold surface treatment to produce the sets in time for release, so the first production runs used Warm Gold instead. The coins and gold ingots were quite clearly designed to appear with a surface treatment, so without one the raw plastic pieces displayed obvious and obtrusive molding marks. Naturally if the horse armor is designed to be used in Warm Gold in the very first wave, that means it shouldn't have this problem, which is good.

I wouldn't say the ONLY one-- I imagine Stormer has a blue head. No guarantees, of course. I'm somewhat disappointed that the new head appears to be regular Transparent Blue rather than Transparent Fluorescent Blue, the color of Stormer's old head. Tr. Fluor. Blue reacts much more to ultraviolet light (that's in the nature of fluorescent colors) and has a long history as use as an eye color in action figure sets. Thankfully, there are a few Tr. Fluor. Blue parts that are still being used in 2013 sets, so that means I probably don't have to worry about the color being discontinued. It'd be a darn shame if it stopped appearing since Tr. Fluor. Red and Tr. Fluor. Yellow left us a long time ago, and Tr. Fluor. Green and Tr. Fluor. Reddish-Orange already tend to steal the spotlight from Tr. Fluor. Blue.

The Light Yellow color is 226 Cool Yellow, known on Bricklink as Bright Light Yellow. It replaced the earlier color 3 Light Yellow, similarly called Light Yellow on Bricklink. Its primary use in System has been for minifigure hair-- Stephanie in the Friends theme uses it conspicuously. Note that Bricklink calls some Friends parts Light Yellow. This is because Bricklink's database is user-generated and some users don't seem to understand the idea that colors are sometimes discontinued-- I can recall when Hamm's plug from the Toy Story sets was listed on Bricklink as Fabuland Brown! Thanks for the pics. Lots of great animals this year. Not sure what to think of the new dolphins-- after all, it's not like the old ones had especially System-like geometries, though these are a little more stylized. But overall my impression of the new animals remains favorable. The inside of the school is very nice and gets some very nice details, but I notice the omission of a gymnasium. Perhaps a large gym would be a good set for a future wave. And I can easily see how with a basketball hoop in the front, the girls' athletic instruction is basically taken care of, which is a wise choice since it leaves the interior open to more academic subject matter. Look! The girls are learning about owls! They even have a stuffed owl as an instructional prop. Very nice. The art class isn't bad either. I love how the classes are different modules that can be re-arranged in different configurations-- I wonder if any FOLs will buy multiples of the set to build additional classroom modules and perhaps a hallway connecting them. The dolphin cruiser's interior is very luxurious and well-furnished. I like how the Friends theme's interiors vary from more "boy-oriented" themes' interiors. LEGO Friends is much more likely to incorporate living spaces instead of just work spaces. It's something that I wish other themes would incorporate some time, but it also makes me yearn for girl-oriented themes in other genres, since LEGO Space and LEGO Castle show this bias a great deal, and I can easily see why this might be more important to young girls who want to act out more grounded, slice-of-life scenes than for young boys who would be conditioned to prefer action scenes. On a side note, this probably is connected with why LEGO Spongebob Squarepants and Harry Potter have been consistently targeted to girls on shop.LEGO.com. Those set designs often favor slice-of-life storytelling and action-driven storytelling alike, and whether this is a coincidence or a deliberate response to how girls tend to play, it seems like it would be effective catering to a diverse market. Overall, this year's Friends selection continues to impress! Hopefully its sales will continue to reflect the hard work and creativity that have been put into this theme.

Yep. It can be seen here, and is already listed on service.LEGO.com as being in two sets, one as far back as 2007. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it showed up in later production runs of 4635, the 2012 set, but its inclusion in 6166, the 2007 set, is either an error or an indication that this set remained in production for an uncharacteristically long time. I'd guess "error" myself. Take note: the two old-style wrenches and the hammer are still included. Only the oil can, drill, and screwdriver have been replaced with newer, more realistic versions-- the two new wrenches and that cross-shaped tool I can't identify are not replacing any existing tools.